In the ongoing debate over how much production is worth how much commerce, I'm making a WAG: I want my Commerceburg to have just enough production s.t. as soon as I have the tech for a necessary building, I start building it, and the building will finish as soon as I have the tech for the next necessary building.

This begs two questions:

1. What are the minimal "necessary" buildings for a good Commerceburg?

2. On average, how far apart are the necessary techs for those necessary buildings, measured in game turns.

Yes, I realize the number of variables to answering either question is absolutely huge, but we have to start somewhere. Guess away.

Hrm, around 3-4 hills, 2 food resources, lots of grassland. Hopefully you can get it by a river and ideally by a coast.

Same problem crops up in every strategy thread it seems. The answer is always "it depends ..."

Assuming we want to retain the benefit of Commerceburg regardless of where the science slider lives, I would say the minimum buildings would be 1)Monastary, 2) Library, 3) Market, 4) Grocer, 5) Bank, 6) University, 7) Observatory and 8) Laboratory Which I usually get built in something resembling that order. (Academy and certain wonders are nice to have also but not relevant here and can be GP rushed.)

The problem is the tech's for 5-8 are all fairly close together on the tree and appear at a time when techs are usually coming in every 5-7 (normal speed) turns, so I almost always discover their tech's before getting more than one or two of those four buildings built, even in non-commerce specialized cities. You would almost have to intentionally steer your research choices away from the next available commerce building.

Library, Observatory and University are the required buildings. The problem here is Observatory and University, which are often very close together.

I guess that's when commerceburg+moneyrushing combo comes in

I believe that Universal Suffrage takes care of any production problems in science cities though, so I generally just spam cottages. If there are hills in the cross I'll build mines that I work when important buildings are due. Most libraries are whipped up and Observatories and Universities comes around Universal Suffrage.